Broken Windows Theory: James Q. Wilson And Kelling

Criminology Final Exam Essay

The broken windows theory was first introduced in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. The theory symbolically used “broken windows” as a metaphor for the disorder and crime within neighborhoods. This theory tries to connect disorder within a community to explain occurrences of serious crimes. Before the development of various theories such as broken windows, police and law enforcement scholars usually focused on serious crime. The major concern was for crimes that most seriously and consequentially affect the victim such as rape, robbery, and murder. However, Wilson and Kelling had a different view of these crimes. They took serious crimes as the final result of a long process of events, theorizing that

It does not just rely on social policy. Both economic theories and social disorganization theories gave solutions that were very costly and would take a long time to prove effective or work. The broken windows theory is seen by many people as a way to affect change of criminal activity quickly, and with the least amount of expenses possible by simply adjusting the police crime-control strategy. The fact is it is much simpler to attack a disorder than to attack social ills, such as poverty and poor

It had a major impact during that time and still remains influential today. One of the most notable applications of this theory was in New York City under the supervision of the Police Commissioner William Bratton (“Broken Windows”). Bratton and others were fully convinced that the uses of the broken window theory, such as aggressive order-maintenance practices in the New York City Police Department impacted the dramatic decrease of crime rate in the city during the 1990s. Bratton used the broken windows theory with the New York City’s transit police force from 1990-1992. Squads of plain clothed officers were assigned to catch turnstile jumpers. The effects were that arrests for misdemeanors increased, while subway crimes of all kinds decreased dramatically. In 1994, when Bratton became New York City’s police commissioner, he introduced his broken windows-based “quality of life initiative.” When he used the broken windows theory, he was able to crack down on certain problematic everyday crimes such as panhandling, disorderly behavior, public drinking, street prostitution, and unsolicited windshield washing, or other such attempts to obtain cash from drivers stopped in traffic. When Bratton resigned in 1996, felonies were down almost 40 percent in New York, and the homicide rate had been halved (“Broken